Jeremiah Chaplin

Who was Jeremiah Chaplin?

Jeremiah Chaplin was a Reformed Baptist theologian who served as the first president of Colby College in Maine.

Chaplin was born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1776. He worked on the family farm, and in 1799 he graduated from Brown University, a school with an historical Baptist affiliation. Chaplin spent a year at Brown as a tutor and then studied theology eventually becoming pastor of a Baptist church in Danvers, Massachusetts. He left this pastorate in 1817 to become president of the new Waterville College at which he served until 1833. Chaplin first met Gardner Colby during this period while Colby was still a child, and Chaplin assisted Colby's family after Colby's father died.

During the remainder of his life, Chaplin preached in Rowley, Massachusetts and Willington, Connecticut, and then moved to Hamilton, New York where he died in 1841. Chaplin held to a Calvinist Baptist theology throughout his life.